It has happened about three times now. You are deep in sleep around four in the morning and you throw your arm around me, snuggle up like a spoon behind me and say, “I love you, mama.” The sweetest words from the sweetest sleep-voice there ever was. My heart can barely hold all the love I feel in those pre-dawn confessions.

You got some candy hearts for Valentine’s Day this week and you ask me what each one says before you eat it. Be Mine. Hugs. Kiss Me. And you pop each one in your mouth saying, “Mmmmm this one is good.” You crack me up, kiddo.

You are my candy heart, my little valentine-light-bearer. And I will cherish your midnight murmurs, holding them in my soul, forever.

“I Get To Love You”
One look at you; my whole life falls in line.
I prayed for you; before I called you mine.
I can’t believe it’s true, sometimes.
I can’t believe it’s true.

I get to love you, it’s the best thing that I’ll ever do.
I get to love you, it’s a promise I’m making to you.
Whatever may come; your heart I will choose.
Forever I’m yours, forever I do.
I get to love you, I get to love you.

The way you love, it changes who I am.
I am undone and I thank God once again.
I can’t believe it’s true, sometimes.
I can’t believe it’s true.

I get to love you, it’s the best thing that I’ll ever do.
I get to love you, it’s a promise I’m making to you.
Whatever may come; your heart I will choose.
Forever I’m yours, forever I do.
I get to love you, I get to love you.
I get to love you, I get to love you.

They say love is a journey, I promise that I’ll never leave.
When it’s too heavy to carry, remember this moment with me.
I get to love you, I get to love you,
I get to love you.

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2017/02/16/i-get-to-love-you/feed/0anniericciSandwichedhttps://anniericci.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/sandwiched/
https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/sandwiched/#respondMon, 16 Jan 2017 15:13:45 +0000http://anniericci.wordpress.com/?p=745]]>Tomorrow I meet with a representative of the Veteran’s Administration who helps veterans apply for additional benefits. I meet with her to talk about my dad’s situation and I have to provide her with another whole slew of information that I have provided, in part, to others involved in this financial requirement quagmire. But before that meeting, I will have to take my four-year-old son to preschool and then back to his grandmother, who will watch him while I attend that meeting.

Amazing how you can cerebrally know about a situation and intellectually understand it without having a real clue about how it plays out in a life… until it plays out in your own life. I am sandwiched. Running the kiddo around to preschool and playdates. And fielding phone calls about my dad’s next doctor’s appointment and figuring out if I can make it to that one. Falling into bed at night thinking, “Crap. I don’t think my son brushed his teeth today. And I didn’t get that check sent off for dad’s taxes.” Sigh. Sleep.

The two main characters, Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, seemed to be about as different as night and day. Stoic vs gregarious. Unbending vs flexible. Tight-lipped vs chatty. You get the idea…black vs white. Captian Call seemed to need no one and want no one. Captain McCrae sought out and relished interaction.

Love is what they had in common. They loved deeply. Crusty, scraggly love creeped out from around the edges of their Texas Ranger hardness. Carving wooden headstones, saving hostages from Native American outlaws, incessant arguing were a few of their expressions of love for friends and each other.

Love. The enduring theme of all great movies.

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/29/love-and-my-favorite-western/feed/0anniericciLittle Bo Peephttps://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/little-bo-peep/
https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/little-bo-peep/#respondWed, 28 Dec 2016 17:20:08 +0000http://anniericci.wordpress.com/?p=483]]>…has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them
Leave them alone and they’ll come home
Wagging their tails behind them.

I still have that book of nursery rhymes my mother read to me as a child. One night she told me to tell her the stories. From then on bedtime stories turned into me seeing how many nursery rhymes I could recite on my own. Lying on my little twin bed under the eaves of the old farmhouse roof, I recited stories about Peter the Pumpkin Eater, Mary and her garden of silver bells, and Little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet. Before long, I’d fall asleep in the middle of a verse and mom would tuck me in.

Eventually, we grew out of that routine. Little girls grow up and leave the ‘tucking-in’ behind them. But those nursery rhymes buried themselves in my memory bank, laying dormant, waiting for an opportunity to be called up.

Fast forward about some thirty-odd years to a log-cabin.

I sit under the sloped eaves of a mountain log cabin, on the floor, next to my son’s little bed. He’s fighting a nap – so afraid to close his eyes for fear of missing out on something. And out they come – those characters and rhymes from my childhood. Once again the clock strikes one and down the mouse runs. Jack and Jill are running up the hill and the kittens have lost their mittens.

I am transported to a time when I was connected to my mother through stories, rhymes, and bedtime. I stroke my son’s forehead and the connection extends across the next generation.

Now, if he’d just go to sleep!

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/little-bo-peep/feed/0anniericciHe is Safehttps://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/he-is-safe/
https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/he-is-safe/#respondSat, 10 Dec 2016 13:59:30 +0000http://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/he-is-safe/]]>Move in day to the Veterans Home was hard. The staff made it better and bearable. He seemed to adjust overnight to the fact that this was his new home. I still fight the guilt that creeps up the inside of my throat like bad chili.

I remind myself in those moments that he’s safe. That he is now being taken care of better than he can take care of himself and better than I can take care of him. When he’s doing very well, it’s easy to question if I’ve done the right thing. But as quickly as the question arises, my dad makes a statement that is so out of left field and wrong that I know he’s in the right place.

Doing the right thing for a parent who is physically and cognitively challenged, even if that’s the thing they don’t want, is hard. Letting go of all the inappropriate and mean comments, letting go of all the times he was not there for me when I needed him, letting go of the anger of how he has lived his life, it’s like taking 100 pound stone off my back.

Now I can walk lightly next to him and love.

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/he-is-safe/feed/0anniericciRock Hard Lonelyhttps://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/rock-hard-lonely/
https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/rock-hard-lonely/#respondSun, 16 Oct 2016 16:08:55 +0000http://anniericci.wordpress.com/?p=697]]>Watching his dementia take over is hard
Watching his alcoholism destroy his best is lonely
And I am the rock.

Seeing his financial statement all in red is hard
Seeing him stand next to the bathroom and ask me where is the bathroom is lonely
And I am the rock

Wishing for none of this to be happening is hard
Wishing for him to be ok is lonely
But I am the rock

I am his rock.
Standing hard
Facing the lonely

Filed under: Uncategorized]]>https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/rock-hard-lonely/feed/0anniericciWhen Did It Start?https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/when-did-it-start/
https://anniericci.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/when-did-it-start/#respondTue, 20 Sep 2016 22:25:21 +0000http://anniericci.wordpress.com/?p=680]]>I keep raking through my memories to try and pinpoint when dad started his downhill mental slide. I guess the first big clue was when he tried to sell one of his two homes to someone whose name he couldn’t remember and for an amount he couldn’t remember. I drove home to Iowa, two-and-a-half-year-old son strapped in the backseat, to fix that one. Disaster.

Angry with me before I even got there, he wouldn’t even talk to me about any issues that were popping up: his memory problems reported by everyone around him, his poor health, his filthy home, his unpaid stack of bills. Looking back, those were the big-fat-as-hell red-flipping signs that SOMETHING was very off. I figured he was being his worse-than-usual-alcoholic self. I was partly right.

Then last year I got the call he’d pooped himself. That he wasn’t showering. That he wasn’t changing clothes. Lucky him (and me, since I live in Montana and he’s in Iowa) the small town community rallied around and helped him. Friends cleaned his house, took him to the doctor, stocked his fridge and got him on an airplane to come see me. It probably should have been a one-way ticket last year. Maybe then he wouldn’t have half-froze to death in his house during a snowstorm for not having paid his propane bill.

And now he’s here. And I am working on his finances. He can’t believe he owes the propane man almost $1000. He can’t believe he hasn’t paid property taxes in almost two years and that he’s possibly going to lose his home to a tax sale. I can’t believe any of it either. But here we are. Both of us losing something.